There was a feeling common to both sides of the House that a new political era had begun with the inauguration of President Grant. Perhaps no one could have accurately defined what was expected, but every one knew that the peculiar conflicts and troubles which had distinguished the years of Mr. Johnson's administration would not be repeated. General Grant's tendencies were liberal and non-partisan, though he recognized an honorable allegiance to the Republican party, which had placed him in power. Many of his personal friends were among the Democrats, and the first few months of his administration promised peace and harmony throughout the country. General Grant had never engaged in a partisan contention, had cast no vote since the outbreak of the war, and was therefore free from the exasperating influence of political controversy. The Democratic members of the House shared fully in the kindly feeling towards the new President. They were in a minority, but among them was a large proportion of able men—men of experience and great skill in debate. It is seldom that the opposition party has such a list of champions as appeared on the Democratic side of the House in the Forty-first Congress. Beck of Kentucky, Randall and Woodward of Pennsylvania, Marshall of Illinois, Brooks, Wood, Potter, Slocum, and Cox, of New York, Kerr, Niblack, Voorhees, and Holman of Indiana, Eldridge of Wisconsin, Van Trump and Morgan of Ohio, unitedly presented a strong array of Parliamentary ability. In different degrees they were all partisans, but of a manly type. Earnest discussion and political antagonism were not allowed by them to destroy friendly relations.
[(1) For complete membership of Forty-first Congress, see Appendix D.]
CHAPTER XVIII.
The changes in the Senate on the 4th of March, 1869, were notable in the character both of the retiring and incoming members.
—Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, entered the Senate for the fourth time. His first election in 1848, to fill out the term of ex-Governor Fairfield, was for three years. He resigned at the close of his second term to accept the governorship of his State, and midway in his third term he was promoted to the Vice-Presidency. From his earliest participation in public life Mr. Hamlin enjoyed an extraordinary popularity. Indeed, with a single exception, he was never defeated for any office in Maine for which he was a candidate. In the great Whig uprising of 1840 he was the Democratic candidate for Congress in the Penobscot district, and was beaten by Elisha H. Allen, afterwards widely known as Chief Justice of Hawaii and Minister from that kingdom to the United States. The candidates were warm personal friends before and after the contest.
—Matthew H. Carpenter succeeded Mr. Doolittle as senator from Wisconsin. He was forty-five years of age and had gained high reputation as a lawyer. He had become well known at the National Capital by his appearance in the Supreme Court, and from his employment by Secretary Stanton, during the war, in some government cases of importance. He was a native of Vermont, but his active career was in the North-West. His ambition as a lad was for the army; and he spent some time at West Point, but left without graduating, and devoted himself to the law. He completed his studies in the office of Mr. Choate in Boston, and began the practice of his profession in Wisconsin. Not long after his settlement in his new home, he lost his sight from over-use of his eyes in study, and for a period of three years was entirely blind. Judge Black, his intimate friend and eulogist, believed that this appalling calamity wrought Mr. Carpenter great good in the end: "It elevated, refined, strengthened all his faculties. Before that time much reading had made him a very full man: when reading became impossible, reflection digested his knowledge into practical wisdom. He perfectly arranged his storehouse of facts and cases, and pondered intently upon the first principles of jurisprudence."
His service in the Senate may rather be termed brilliant than useful. The truth is that Mr. Carpenter attempted to do what no man can accomplish: he tried to maintain his full practice at the bar, and discharge his full duties as senator at the same time. His strength was not equal to the double load. He was endowed with a high order of ability. If he had given all his time to the Senate, or all to the Bar, he would have found few peers in either field of intellectual combat. Aside from the weight of his argument, his manner of speech was attractive. He had an agreeable voice, precisely adapted in volume and tone to the Senate Chamber. He was affluent in language, graceful in manner, and, beyond all, was gifted with that quality—rare, indefinable, but recognized by every one—which constitutes the orator.
—Carl Schurz now took his seat as a senator from Missouri. He was born a Prussian subject, and had just completed his fortieth year. He had been well educated in the gymnasium at Cologne, and in a partial course at the university of Bonn. Though retaining a marked German accent, he quickly learned to speak English with fluency and eloquence, and yet with occasional idiomatic errors discernible when he words are printed. He took active part before German audiences, for Frémont, in the Presidential canvass of 1856, and began to make public addresses in English in 1858, when he espoused the cause of Mr. Lincoln in the famous contest with Douglas. He was widely sought as a speaker in both of Mr. Lincoln's contests for the Presidency, 1860 and 1864. In the latter year he was especially forcible, attractive, and effective. Subsequently he fell off, apparently in strength, certainly in popularity. As a lecturer he lost his hold upon the lyceum, and as a political orator he began to repeat himself, not merely in sense but in phrase. As a senator he did not meet the expectation of his friends. His failure was in large part due to the fact that he has not the power of speaking extempore. He requires careful and studious preparation, and has never attained the art of off-hand parliamentary discussion, which Colonel Benton likened to "shooting on the wing." So deficient is Mr. Schurz in this talent, that he has been known to use a manuscript in an after-dinner response, a style of speech whose chief merit consists in its spontaneity, with apt reference to incidents which could not possibly be foreseen.
The loss of Mr. Schurz's popularity—a popularity that was very marked in the earlier period of his career—is due in part to certain unsteady and erratic tendencies, some of which are in strong contrast with characteristics that are recognized as belonging in an especial degree to his race. Through all the centuries since Tacitus drew his vivid picture of the habits and manners of the Germans, their attachment, it might almost be called their passion, for home, has been a marked and meritorious feature of their character. To Fatherland first, and then to whatever country fate or fortune may draw them, their devotion is proverbial. This admirable trait seems altogether wanting in Mr. Schurz. When he left Germany he lived for three years in other countries of Europe,—first in Switzerland, then in France, then in England. In 1852 he came to America, and resided first in Pennsylvania, then in Wisconsin, then in Michigan, then in Missouri, and then in New York. He has not become rooted and grounded anywhere, has never established a home, is not of any locality or of any class, has no fixed relation to Church or State, to professional, political, or social life, has acquired none of that companionship and confidence which unites old neighbors in the closest ties, and give to friendship its fullest development, its most gracious attributes.
The same unsteadiness has entered as a striking feature in the public career of Mr. Schurz. The party he upheld yesterday met with his bitterest denunciations the day before, and to-morrow he will support the political organization of whose measures he is the most merciless censor to-day. He boasts himself incapable of attachment to party, and in that respect radically differs from the great body of his American fellow-citizens. He cannot even comprehend that exalted sentiment of honorable association in public life which holds together successive generations of men,—a sentiment which in the United States causes the Democrat to reverence the memory of Jefferson and Jackson and Douglas, which causes his opponent to glory in the achievements of Hamilton and Clay and Lincoln; a sentiment which in England has bound the Whigs in a common faith and common glory, from Walpole to Gladstone, and their more conservative rivals in a creed of loyalty whose disciples, from Bolingbroke to Beaconsfield, include many of the noblest of British patriots.